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PARTISAN REVIEW
The relations between the political and literary elites were gov–
erned by surprisingly traditional instincts on both sides: within the
[Zionist] "revolution," Amos Oz told me, "there has been a tradition
of respect for intellectuals, writers, painters - those who are supposed
to be the heirs of the prophets." No writer could pass on a chance to
"speak truth to power," especially when power would continue to ac–
cept sole responsibility for the truth it would choose to act on; no
politician (except for some ofIsrael's new populist anti-intellectuals)
would willingly appear unread and unwashed by the renaissance of
Hebrew literature, the spiritual medium of the Zionist revolution.
But respect did not necessarily mean "obedience": the political
leaders respected the great writers, but rarely their political advice.
Currently, the Labor Party has a unit organizing the literary and
artistic communities, and Shimon Peres meets with writers several
times a year for "discussion."
There were a few exceptions to the left's dominant position
among the intellectual establishment, like the poet Uri Zvi Green–
berg, a one-time colleague ofIsaac Bashevis Singer's in prewar War–
saw, who ended up on the right. A few other writers, like the poet
Nathan Alterman, started out in the labor movement, and embraced
the "Greater Israel" idea after the 1967 Six Day War resulted in the
capture of the West Bank and Gaza territories - although before that
idea had become the sole property of the right. Only a few, like the
novelist Moshe Shamir, went the whole "up from communism" route:
starting out as a member of the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair, he ended
up as a Knesset member of the annexationist right-of-Likud Techiya
party.
When Likud finally won in 1977, after half a century of social
democratic "hegemony" collapsed on itself, the country's literary, aca–
demic, and journalistic elites were against their rule. The idea that a
changeover from one large party to the other might be a legitimate
feature of democratic culture was scarcely spoken of. This became
clear during a 1986 television documentary about Abba Ahimeir, who
for a while led a pro-fascist wing of the revisionist rightist Zionists.
Yitzhak Ben Aharon, a grand old man of the left, said the violence of
the labor movement against the right in the thirties was because fas–
cism could happen [in Israel]. When I phoned Ben Aharon to inquire
how he could equate Begin's election victory in 1977 with the rise to
power of Mussolini and Hitler, he told me: "There were periods of
transition then, too."-As if Begin, for all his objectionable policies,
